The Fate of the two cloned baby monkeys: Why cruel animal testing doesn’t work

It was heralded in the world’s media when cloned baby monkeys Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were born in captivity China when it should have been condemned.

These poor babies will never have normal monkey lives and be allowed to indulge in their normal behaviours. Instead the two babies will spend their lives in a lab cage being poked and prodded by so called scientists and cruelly experimented on.

And the sad fact of the matter is that the pain and suffering they will endure will be for nothing because animal testing isn’t only cruel but completely unnecessary and it doesn’t yield reliable results for humans.

Don’t believe me. Believe scientists like Professor Geoff Pilkington who is working on developing better ways to treat people with brain tumours. His own mother died of a brain tumour.

“Many drugs that work when tested on ‘tumour’ cells grown alone in dishes and then tested in poor animal models, frequently do not work in the clinic on patients.”

In other words, millions of pounds are being wasted every single on research using animals that isn’t relatable to humans. Imagine what results could be achieved if medical research focussed on non-animal methods that are much more reliable. Well, if you want to find out if some drug works on a human being then why not test it on a human model?

All of that animal testing has been so successful that in Professor Pilkington’s words:

“We have not been able to substantially change the dismal outcome for patients with brain tumours for fifty years.”

And it’s not just brain tumour research that’s been hindered by scientists experimenting on animals.

*Professor Pilkington was speaking in Replacement News the newsletter of Animal Free Research UK (formerly called the Dr Hadwen Trust).You can read more about them here.

So, why don’t we hear about more about the success of non-animal testing models?

The top medical journals where most of the media get their “new breakthrough in cancer research” type spectacular headlines from that very rarely work in humans because the research was done with animals, want researchers to validate their research findings through animal testing!

In short, if animal testing isn’t used they tend not to publish the research. Not very scientific is it?

No wonder the drugs don’t work in humans and millions of animals are born, kidnapped and breed to live out miserable lives in cages to be experimented on.